Posts by Quentin North

Break Key

The break key pre-dates any of the micro era computers and dates back to the 19th century telegraph. It was certainly on old teletypes used with mainframes in the 1950s and 60s and referred to a function called "line break". In the comms between a TTY terminal and the computer a line break effectively brought the signal level to a "space" condition (usually +5v IIRC) and would wake up a modem or multiplexor at the computer end. This would be used in some computer system as the login prompt key and also the abort program execution key. Indeed, even the 1985 IBM PC keyboard had a break key, but it was a alt-shifted function of the pause key. Quite why IBM didn't choose alt-break fro login/interrupt/reboot I don't know. More info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_key

Spotify resets too

So is spotify, email this morning.

Spain, Bristol AND Sussex

How come you don't mention Sussex uni, which two of the paper's authors are from?

Outlook

They have still not fixed Outlook to make it identical to the Windows version.

Yet again, Im going to have to run Windows in Fusion/Parallels in order to get a proper Exchange client that doesn't break every five minutes and provides all the views, including the at a glance view with a side bar of upcoming events and tasks. Why can't MS just make Outlook work on a Mac, how hard can it be? Its the only reason I still run windows in a VM.

Mainly a public sector issue

For the public sector this effectively rules out the use of most cloud services as we are required to protect personal data and not transfer it to other jurisdictions without protection. Goodbye office 365, google apps etc, hello, on premise data centre, exchange, etc.

Other products are available

Galileo and ForeverMap on iOS both provide OS levels of offline mapping and in the case of ForeverMap, route planning too.

Language bias becaiuse internets

The issue I would have with this survey is that it is biased towards languages that are common for internet software development and therefore posted up on Gthub etc. If you took a look at much commercial software you might find a good level of use of older languages such as C, COBOL, PL/SQL, and even old 4GLs like UNIFACE and Pro-IV. In scientific computing you will find FORTRAN still in use.

Outlook 2016 still fails

I have had the outlook 2016 beta for a while and it still fails compared to outlook 2013. Calendar still doesn't properly look up user names from AD but just shows the standard email format name and you still can't get the at a glance summary of today's activities with diary events and tasks on the right sidebar of the Mail window. This latter point is a real shame because it is a really useful feature of the outlook for windows UI. If it still uses EWS it will probably regularly orphan repeating calendar entries too. I'm still living with that legacy of Entourage, a truly shite piece of software.

That said outlook 2016 doesn't suffer from the annoying greyed out flags in compressed view that outlook 2013 does. A nightmare if you are colur blind because you can't tell red from grey.

20 minutes into the future

Max Headroom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_the_Future

Galileo on iOS

Galileo on iOS provides OS maps fairly effectively and overlays Open StreetMap with offline cacheing and this is fine as far as it goes. As I have a canal boat, route planning for canals would be ideal with journey times including locks and notices of canal closures. Unfortunately the C&RT who run the canals stopped providing their useful plot your route and download a PDF service and I have yet to find a decent mapping app that will let you route plan canals apart from as a series of waypoints the same as walking.

Oh no it wasn't.

It's possible that this was not a commercial offering, but I sat in a car in Milton Keynes in 1981 and made a mobile phone call to the USA, so this 1986 date seems all wrong to me. From memory the phone I used was a true cellular car phone with a numeric keypad, single line numeric led display, and a diplexer and tx gear in the boot. Prior to this the company I worked for had Aircall radio phones, but they required the user to request the operator to make the call and patch it through.

Core store!

On a very small scale. And without the electrical overhead.

In business, no one can hear you scream.

As a large organisation with a mix of PC and Mac desktops Outlook 2011, and God forbid!, Entourage have been dismal failures as Exchange clients compared to Outlook Windows. The tweaks to Outlook 2011 does little to improve this. Forget it.

We also have Outlook 2015 Mac through a O365 sub, and whilst this is an improvement on Outlook 2011, it is still sufficiently far from Outlook Windows that its utility is second class. I am hoping that MS will address the shortcomings of Outlook 2015 before formal release and so make it 100% feature comparable with Outlook Windows, but I won't hold my breath.

You might ask why we use MS products in general, Exchange in particular and O365 subs? In short, because they are generally good products that require fairly minimal attention once set up and there is a large pool of people who can support them when they go wrong. For a business, renting software can make more sense.

Xenix

Wasn't Xenix in the mix here somewhere? I think Microsoft produced that about 1980 and this was some of the basis of the MS FUD campaign around SCO Unix and Linux.

Actually nothing very exciting here

This just looks like a SIP based cloud PBX service charged on a per user basis. Lync, or any number of PBX suppliers like Aastra or Unify, will do this for you and a whole lot more.

I wish the MNOs would bring back the old dual number services that Orange used to have a few years ago. I get a iPhone from my work, who pay for calls and data, but I don't want to give up having a separate personal number so I still have an old Nokia for that. I know I could go dual SIM on an 'droid phone, but Im a fanbois who doesn't want to pay Apple or Samsung prices.

Palm V

Never mind WebOS, Ive still got a Palm V, and for what it was intended to do I still think it is the best little PDA you can get.

Wouldn't it be funny if...

Amazon was to go bust and Apple bought the whole lot.

Wuala

In the EU if you require good privacy you might consider www.wuala.com which is EU hosted and provides client side encryption.

Divers

Already wear computers that tell them all that information and more including gas mix etc. They don't usually play music or record video, though.

Sounds like packet radio to me

Sound alike old-skool VHF packet radio with the GoTenna acting as a TNC & BBS. This was being done in 1980. Nothing new here.

I can't see this lasting because of the termination fees. Unlike in the US, where the call receiver (also) pays, in the EU the call maker pays. If they are offering 200 mins of calls to landlines as well as own network, each call will loose money.

Sophos AV works well, but there is a performance hit

We use Sophos AV and it works well. There is a free version for home use. As with all A/V there is a performance hit but on new Macs, especially those with SSDs, you won't notice it.

US Justice dept is responsible IMO

If the US Justice had not found that the publishers were colluding when they did their deal with Apple, Amazon would not be all powerful now and there would be competition in the market place (albeit a duopoly). Unfortunately, now it is only Amazon that can dictate terms to publishers.

Data Protection Act and Information Commissioner

It seems to me that this is a data breach and eBay has a registered office in South West London. Can the ICO take action if we make a complaint?

pointless ASA ruiling

After all, these are always post-hoc. The ad went out, many people received it and some of those that received it bought EE. The market share was won. The fact that the campaign was misleading is irrelevant as far as EE is concerned, they were never going to use it again anyway.

Elite

Elite is a joy to behold in its 8-bit glory, or you you could get on the latest Elite redux bandwagon for a mere 100 quid, https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous-cat/elite-dangerous-premium-beta.html

Drive the competitor prices down

If it helps to drive down the cost of the DJI Phantom 2 Vision + that would be a good thing, but as it stands I don't think the BeBop would make me change from opting for a Vision + over this.

Niche market

You can niche market a commodity to make it profitable. For example, most (all?) cloud providers today are US companies. There has in recent weeks been issues about data protection for European data on US company cloud services. Even if the data centre is in the EU the company HQ is in the US and subject to US action. This is a BIG deal for the public sector which is legally required to ensure personal data is not exported outside the EU. This means I can't provide Dropbox or Box or AWS to my organisation until we can be certain that US action will not seize cloud stored data which in my organisation frequently includes personal data. Therefore a niche player who HQ is in Europe and provides a Dropbox/Box like solution could sweep up in the public sector.

THIS is the reason you need a Dec 10

I played MUD (& VALLEY, if any remember that) starting in 1980. It was available on Essex DEC-10 and then later I recall it appeared in Oslo for some reason I never knew. I made it to Wizard level in MUD by scripting a terminal client to solve the Crown in the Swamp puzzle gaining the maximum points each game reset.

So, if you had the source how would you run it today? Well, you will need a DEC-10 running TOPS-10 and IIRC an MDL compiler, although I might be confusing that with Dungeon, either way not particularly common today were it not for the SIMH project that can simulate a DEC-10 and recently has got TOPS-10 up an running. Not sure about MDL though.

Outlook is the MS USP

Today I use Outlook 2010 on a Mac with Parallels. I do this because as a desktop organiser it is one of the best and Mac Outlook 2011 falls woefully short of the desired functionality and reliability. Sure, the Mac has separate Mail and Calendar clients which are fine, but for serious business use Outlook 2010 trumps the lot. The key USP for Outlook 2010 for me is the combined Inbox, with folder tree left sidebar and upcoming appointments and tasks on the right side bar in a single window. You can't beat that at a glance integrated view. The "My Day" app on Mac is shite. A case of too much adherence to Mac UI guidelines which say everything should be in a separate window. Usability wise, it does not work. Bring Outlook 2010 to Mac for 2014!

Word, Powerpoint and Excel? They are convenient I could live without them. I would like to see MS Project back on the Mac. I had this on a Mac under OS/9 and OS/7 in both 68K and PPC forms, so the code is around somewhere.I would also lie to see Sharepoint WebDAV support Macs too. In this day-and-age I find it incredible that you can't have a filename that starts with a "." or contains special characters, and the total path string length must be less that 255 characters. What year is this, 1984?

EE/Orange/T-mob is just as bad

In Brighton the EE/Orange/T-Mobile gsm network has been broken for about 2-3 weeks now and the problem is spreading. You can't even report the problem because the you can't phone support and the only other way of reporting a problem to EE is to write a letter by post, no web form or email support. When will these companies employ competent engineers and provide decent service?

Stupid

Im a self confessed fanbois, i have been an Apple owner since 1979, but if Apple do this I think they are losing their way (but not of the first time).

Apple's USP, if you like, is not that it follows market demand (thats what Lenovo, Samsung, HTC etc do) but that they create market demand. The iPod and the iPhone show this. Sure there were similar products before hand, but the market exploded when Apple led the market to them. The same could be said of WIMP interface on computers. Before the Lisa and Mac, nobody knew they wanted one.

To start to become consumer led is to lose your lead, and that, for Apple, is a dead end. They will never compete on price and they are not commodity mass market producers. I foresee a repeat of the Scully 90's coming up, with failed attempts to licence products or services to OEMs and little innovation from Apple themselves. Sell your stock now.

The ultimate jeopardy answer to life the universe and everything.

42.

Now, Watson, what is the question?

Simple smartphone in 1983 based on a PC1500

IN about 1983 me and a friend put together a Sharp PC1500, serial interface, home-brew CUTS modulator and a VHF Amateur radio to build in software and hardware what we would today call a simple smartphone. THe software allowed you to view diary entries and read simple messages (email was not a common term back then). The modulator and Radio communicated back to a base station made up of an Apple II plus another CUTS interface, two VHF radios (for voice duplex) and a Hays compatible modem card supporting 1200/75 Prestel standard. The modem had been hacked so the Apple could switch the audio input and out of the modem to the radios. This allowed the PC1500 to have data communications with the Apple II for the purposes of exchanging messages and calendar events with other users and also route voice via radio to a telephone line to allow for voice calls which could be set up by the PC1500 or using the DTMF keypad on the VHF Radio (a Yeasu FT208 for the interested).

At the time I thought it was pretty neat and showed it to some people who then introduced me to some folks from BT Labs and they showed me something called a cellular telephone in a car. Shortly after that I gave up on my little homebrew efforts as clearly real people were way ahead of anything I was going to achieve.